TOPIC:

Maybe I've missed something, but why can't we have an open age WAAFL stage team? Why do we restrict it? Surely we can open it up and get a better more representative team each year

As I understand it we used to have an open aged state team where we competed against other State teams around the country. It was restricted to under 23's because the WAAFL used to get absolutely smashed each year by the SA and VIC amateur sides.
I dare say if an open aged state amateur team was reintroduced WA would continue to get belted as, for example, VAFA (the best ammo comp in the land) has a points based player system instead of a "no paid players" system like the WAAFL. This means the VAFA team could be filled with recently retired AFL players (15 transferred from AFL to VAFA in 2017) whereas WAAFL would have no ex-AFL representatives.

Just introduce a rule saying no ex-AFL players can play as they are not really ammos.

That would never work. When would the ex-AFL players be considered eligible to play for their state? After one year? Two years? Five years? Never? What about an ex-AFL player that played only 1 game? Should they be banned from playing for their state amateur league? What about a 200 game player?
Drawing the line would be impossible to determine.
The problem is that most amateur leagues have different interpretations/definitions as to what an "amateur" is. Which is probably why it was decided to do away with an open age state team in favour of under 23's.

Best of luck to all the boys selected for Sunday

Ceiling Fan wrote: Best of luck to all the boys selected for Sunday

Agree. sock it to em